roundtheworldflights.com

The Sydney Harbour Bridge climb must be the most successful tour operation of its kind anywhere in the world. It is a complete human conveyor belt – an entire factory dedicated to elevating whole groups of people spiritually and physically skyward. The Bridgeclimb complex is erected in a series of tunnels where, until a few years ago, they did nothing more adventurous than sell Porsches. At the height of the season Bridgeclimb is now processing groups of up to 10 tourists, 24 hours a day.

You are prepared, kitted out and trained in a super-efficient environment. You are shown how to attach your harnesses and are fitted with earphones that instead of going in your ear rest on your cheekbones and send vibrations that your brain deciphers as your guide’s voice. This way your ears are also open to eternal sound. The whole atmosphere feels strangely like it will on the fateful future day when some of us (or some of you) will be selected for transfer to a less exhausted planet.

And as you walk out beyond the giant support pylons you battle with what will presumably be the same feeling that there is a better than average chance that you might not return to earth in one piece. There is something bizarre in the human psyche that makes people pay a hefty fee for the privilege to climb to potentially fatal heights…the same heights that, on another day, they would demand a considerable premium to work at.

In the end the trek to the 134-metre summit is much easier than most people imagine and, because of the sheer dimensions of what Sydney-siders call ‘the Big Coathanger,’ you never really feel like you are living on the edge at all. Even without the safety harnesses and the training you realise that it would be almost impossible to fall without putting some serious determination into it.

But the Bridgeclimb affords combines a feeling of adventure with the most spectacular views on the planet. You are standing on top of a 53,1440 tonne steel arch (pinned together with 6 million rivets – some of them up to 40cm long for any budding riveters out their) and you can take in a 360° view of what is very likely the most iconographic cityscapes in the world. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and it is easy to see why so many people line up everyday to be ‘elevated.’

But the following day I was once again back at sea level. My week in Fiji had passed in a blur of ‘office work’ – battling with an overflowing inbox and magazine deadlines – but Hawaii had seriously boosted my appetite for waves. So I abandoned downtown Sydney and headed for Bondi Beach.

I paddled out into the line-up at Bondi and dropped into a couple of sweetly peeling left-handers. I had already been in the water almost two hours when I noticed what could only be described as a blur of activity on the horizon. It came closer until eventually it was only about 200 metres away and I could clearly see a huge flock of gulls and frigate birds diving on an immense school of fish. There were easily a thousand birds and they were churning the water up in a frenzy. It was impossible to imagine that all that thrashing and blood was not going to be enough to attract at least a few submarine predators.

“Never seen a feeding-frenzy like that in twenty years,” marvelled one grizzled old surf dude. Aussies are notoriously proud of their man-eating wildlife.

I caught a few more waves and then paddled back in. After all tomorrow morning I had an early flight to Perth and then I would be heading into the great ‘Red Centre.’ It seemed right that after all this I ought to save my sorry carcase for the creatures of the world’s most fatal desert.

Mark in the Australia Outback

 

You can count the miles down the Stuart Highway from Alice to Urldunda in dead kangaroos. There’s not a helluva lot else to look at though and my eyes began to glaze over somewhere after the thirtieth ‘roo road-kill.

These road-kills have had a horrifying effect on Australia’s biggest bird of pray. The wedge-tailed eagle, with its eight-foot wingspan, is irresistibly attracted to this transcontinental smorgasbord and, having no natural predators, it is quite ready to do battle with any vehicle that has the audacity to try to scare it off its meal. Trackside roadhouses are full of yarns about drivers who were terrified to see a half-dead wedgie coming through the windscreen at him. “He was all torn and bleeding and spitting feathers when he turned up here,” they tell you. “Funniest bloody thing you ever saw!”

Outbackers have a wry sense of humour. They continue to see themselves as pioneering characters and in a sense they still are. This is the forbidden land that the first settlers knew by such mysterious names as Beyond the Black Stump, The Never Never or simply the Red Centre. The Northern Territory is ‘the real Outback.’ Southern roadtrains are not considered worthy of the name here in the Top End where they have five trailers, stretch to over fifty metres and are capable of sucking the windscreen-wipers off your car as they pass.

Even ‘roos wouldn’t be seen dead on the Lasseter Highway from Urldunda to Uluru. This is the real desert and feral camels are more likely here. There are said to be as many as half a million wild camels in Australia and they are of such pure and hardy breed that some have been sold to Saudi Arabia for racing stock. Territorians in general seem to be delighted at this proof that they also even have the world’s toughest camels. (Although they never got around to feeling that way about the rabbits).

This is dingo country too and even in the resort around The Rock you will often see semi-tame dingoes searching through the bins. The trouble is that the dingoes have mated with dogs from the Aboriginal camps and they are not as shy as they used to be. In some camps the Aboriginals live in fear of what one little girl described to me as ‘cheeky dogs.’ She said she was frightened to go outside after dark because of the dogs. But these dogs are cheeky in a way that only Outback animals can be cheeky: there have been reports recently of people who were actually killed and eaten by ‘cheeky dogs.’

Up here termite mounds grow to cathedral-like proportions and ‘dunny budgies’ (flies) are so thick you get tennis elbow shooing them off. Legend has it that at times the flies can carry small children away. Territorians are immensely proud of their fearsome wildlife and will warn you that the snakes here are so smart that if you drive over them they’ll wrap themselves around your differential so that they can follow you into your house.

Even a relatively short roadtrip from Alice to Uluru, just 5 hours each way (a mere jaunt in the scale of the Outback), shouldn’t be undertaken without proper preparation and a reliable vehicle. This simple journey to The Rock once took me three days when I was stranded by torrential rains and trapped in the little settlement of Curtin Springs. The population of five swelled overnight to almost fifty and some people were attacked by a herd of feral camels that were driven crazy by the excess of water.

Even a relatively short roadtrip into the Outback remains an adventure. The camels and the cheeky dogs might not get you but there are countless terrible things that could happen to you on these remote highways.…and whatever it might be there will always be an Outback ‘character’ who will see the funny side to it.

Mark on 5* hostels....

 

It’s now almost seven months since I left London for Panama and began this little jaunt around the world. Seven months living out of a backpack, eating in cafés and cheap restaurants. Seven months of working on magazine stories (more stories than I can remember now) in what must by now be a couple of dozen ‘hijacked offices’ in the corners of cafes, bars, airports, hotel lobbies, private sitting rooms and even railway carriages.

Seven months sleeping in such a motley mingled mishmash of different accommodation that it is almost impossible to recall them all now. There have been nights lately when I’ve woken up in the complete darkness of the wee hours and literally struggled to remember where I am: well I can remember going through X…and the night before last I slept in Y…therefore I must now be in Z. One night I lay in bed unable even to reach for a light switch because it was impossible to conjure up a picture of what the inside of the room looked like.

Don’t imagine that I’m complaining. Swap this variety (or ‘insecurity’) for the predictability of the 9 to 5…? Not on your nelly!

But it would be reassuring sometimes to have a nice clean room, a comfortable lounge to chill out in, a few friendly faces to share a beer with in my own language, even a kitchen where for once I can do some cooking for myself. So, even before I arrived in Australia I decided that the best option – and very likely the cheapest too – would be to stay in YHA hostels. The Aussie Youth Hostel Association (www.yha.com.au) has a network of more than 140 hostels all over the country. They range from the big Sydney Central hostel which is more like a business class hotel in many other countries (with comfortable en-suite rooms, round the clock wifi, rooftop pool and spa and even a mini cinema) to quirky and charming little ‘boutique hotels’ where you can relax in your own self-contained apartment complete with kitchen and a barby on the terrace!

It seems that things have changed since my school holidays backpacking through the hostels of Northumberland, sleeping in cramped dorms that have been impregnated by decades of sweaty socks. Dorm accommodation is still available in most Australian hostels and you can still often find a bed for as little as eight quid. Since the hostels have fully-equipped kitchens you can end up saving another fortune on restaurant bills. (The bigger hostels have rows of fully-equipped individual kitchenettes so that you cook in your own space…and don’t have to climb over other people’s dirty dishes).

The YHA has just opened a spectacular new hostel in Sydney’s most historic quarter. It is the first budget accommodation in The Rocks and it is very likely the most ecologically friendly and environmentally sensitive hotel in Australia. It is built on top of the remains of the first settlement that date back to 1795. But the entire 106-room hostel is raised up on specially designed pillars so that less than 2% of its area even touches the ground. Other hotels might talk about their carbon footprint but this unique building barely has a footprint at all.

My room in the Bondi hostel had wonderful views over the beach and there was a killer rooftop terrace for a stubby or two at the end of the day. In the big Perth hostel I was able to set up a temporary office in one of several quiet chill-out lounges before having a quick workout in the hostel’s gym and then a couple of beers in the company of a pretty Japanese yoga instructor who could get spectacularly tipsy on kahlua and milk. I headed down to Margaret River on a mission for some frosty and feisty surf and booked into an entire family apartment (could sleep six) where I could barbecue thick steaks in Margaret River olive oil and wash them down with local ‘Bare Rooted’ vino. In Adelaide I was lucky enough to coincide my visit with the arrival of a touring Aboriginal drum group (and then travelled on with them as far as Alice Spring). The hostel in Alice is built in an old building that was once an outdoor cinema – the scene of many a dramatic evening no doubt. Now there is a tempting swimming pool here too and in the evening cultural films are still shown to backpackers who want to understand something about Outback history and Aboriginal society. (Most importantly the hostel is just down the road from Bojangles, which on any given Saturday night remains one of my favourite pubs.)

By my reckoning I figure that if I continue at this rate it would only take me eight and a half months to stay in every hostel in Australia. Am I tired of living on the road yet? Don’t be silly.

Uluru - a plea

There are few things more hypnotic than watching a desert highway flicker out, like a shaken rope, as it stretches out into the limitless distance. Moreover you can be pretty sure that no cop in his right mind is going to be sitting out on this blood-boiling forty-five degree outback day. So you keep the needle hovering at a steady 130km/hr and listen to the wheel purr over the hot sticky tarmac.

A map of the Outback shows just a relatively small section of desert between The Alice the Erldunda roadhouse. It is actually close to three hours driving but that is nothing in the scale of Australia. If you carry on south from Erldunda there would be very little to make you twitch the steering wheel before you reached Coober Pedy and the edge of the desert in about another ten hours. Swing right after you have refuelled at the roadhouse though and the Lassiter Highway will soon lead you to one of the undeniable wonders of the world. When you are two hours down the Lassiter Highway you start to see Uluru (once known as Ayers Rock) rise, like a great red whale, from the flat desert horizon. Uluru is the most photographed and instantly recognisable rock in the world. Yet nothing can prepare you for the sight of the world’s most gigantic monolith as it begin to rise up until its almost sheer red walls loom 348m over you.

This was actually my second visit to a place that was still then universally known as Ayers Rock. The Aboriginals long ago asked that people respect the traditional name of their sacred site. This place is called Uluru they say – not Ayers Rock. They have been pointing this out, to the best of my knowledge, for well over a decade. Sure it takes a little to accustom people to knew names but we grasped the changes to Myanmar and Mumbai fast enough and have realised that we shouldn’t call tsunamis tidal waves. Yet even the Australian authorities continue to signpost ‘Ayers Rock’ rather than Uluru even on the sacred land around the rock itself.

When I first arrived seven years ago and I was surprised to see so many tourists still hiking up what everybody knew even then was the most spiritual site of the local land-owning Aboriginals. I figured that people probably climbed because they had been shuttled in at speed and nobody had taken the time to point out that the local Aboriginal community respectfully asked people to ‘please not to climb.’ In most other (reputedly) culturally sensitive countries such a request from the traditional owners of a sacred spot would be sufficient for an immediate ban on climbing.

Today there is a huge board right at the base of the rock in which this request to refrain from climbing is detailed in 16 languages…and still whole crowds of jack-booted tourists goose-step by (metaphorically speaking) en-masse to make the climb to the summit. Their defence would presumably be to point out that they have travelled halfway around the world to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
This is like telling your host: “Well, I’m sorry but you shouldn’t have invited me to your house if you didn’t want me to practise ju-jitsu on your grandmother.”

Aussie Vastness

“That’s the thing about Aus. It’s vast!” my fellow passenger was saying, as we shot across the desert at 100km an hour while gulping at frosted glasses of Victoria Beer. “People from outside just can’t grasp the sheer ‘vastity’ of it.”

The Indian Pacific train had been trundling across the Western Australian Outback for close to twenty hours already and I had to admit that I was struggling to come to terms with it myself. We were now in what my friend might have called the complete ‘emptity’ of the Nullarbor Desert. The name derives from Latin for ‘treeless desert’ and apart from a few scraggy bushes there had been nothing worthy of the name for the last two hundred miles. Then we came upon a little collection of a few shacks around a railway watering point. At some point in the past some optimistic (or perhaps just humorous) souls had planted about a dozen scraggy pines here and they had named the place ‘Forest.’

The map shows an enthralling chain of place names: Kellerberrin, Kingoonya, Woomera and, in this sweltering desolation, the wonderfully named Koolyanobbing. In the village of Cook, touted as ‘Queen City of the Nullarbor,’ we stopped to explore the few sun-scorched huts and the old jailhouses while the train refilled its water-tanks. A sign beside the track said that Cook has a population of ‘four people, forty dingoes and four million flies.’

Scarcity of water aside, crossing the Nullarbor is in some ways more like making an ocean voyage. The Indian Pacific sings smoothly along on her silver rails between featureless horizons with never a bump or a lurch. This is officially the longest stretch of straight railway line in the world. You only realise what an unusual sensation this is when you suddenly find yourself careering into the wall when you reach the first kink in the track after 298 miles.

The Indian Pacific connects Perth and Sydney along 4,352km of track but I would be disembarking at Adelaide to catch another train northwards. The famous Ghan follows the supply route once used by the intrepid cameleers who brought supplies from South Australia to the embryonic settlement at Alice Springs. The cameleers came from such diverse places as Punjab, Kashmir, Sind, Rajasthan, Persia and Afghanistan but came to be known to the locals simply as ‘the Ghans.’

The Ghan claws its way for 2,979km from Adelaide right through the great Red Centre. Like a great silver spear, piercing directly into the heart of the island continent, The Ghan still offers the feeling of an expedition (albeit a delightfully relaxing and luxurious one) as it leaves behind the wheat fields of South Australia and heads off into what, even today, is one of the world’s great wildernesses.

It took the great explorer John McDouall Stuart many months to cross the desert from coast to coast. (Having made it that far – and on the verge of starvation – he had to turn around and walk all the way back again because nobody had thought to send a boat to meet him).
Many years ago I hitch-hiked and drove across this same route in a month. With The Ghan I made the crossing easily in just over a week (with a stop at ‘the Alice’). Nevertheless, by the time The Ghan rolled through the steaming tropical rainforests of ‘The Top End’ and into Darwin I had once again found an increased respect for the incredible vastity of Australia.